


Atlantis

by Fibs



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, Friendship, I wrote them as friends but I don't mind headcanoning them as more its up to you, Language, Male-Female Friendship, Possible Relationship, Swearing, Underwater Dystopia, Underwater Dystopian City, Underwater city
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 12:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18571921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fibs/pseuds/Fibs
Summary: Cassie hated Atlantis.When radiation had finally make Earth unlivable, Atlantis was built. Two Miles under the sea, the high end of society and education lives in coral-covered apartments, lightened up by frogfish and living their lives as the last survivors in the world's biggest refugee camp. When Cassie's best friend goes missing, she starts to question the city she hates so much.





	Atlantis

**Author's Note:**

> This was my final project for a Creative Writing class I took last year. The story has been published in a small magazine already and now it's on here. This is kind of my baby, so have fun reading and if there are any questions, comments or thoughts at all, let me know :)

Cassie hated Atlantis. She hated what it had done to her dad and she hated that it had taken the only thing it had ever given to her and most of all she hated that no matter how far she went there always was more water that she couldn’t escape.

The few things she did like about the city included Felix Lee Barnabas, because he understood that she liked things, but didn’t force her to show it. It included writing film reports for an edgy magazine that she would never read herself. And although she would never admit it, she also liked the frogfish surrounding all the domes and lighten up like stars before the night began.

"They always come at dawn to watch how the humans walk home and slowly fall to sleep.", Felix had told her once at the Eastern market ring. "They think it’s a dance and they wonder who choreographed it and then, when we’re all asleep, they go home and try do dance it themselves."

"You're crazy. They’re ugly fish, not some fucking artists.", Cassie had responded. And still she hadn’t got rid of the idea that glooming swarms of fish were dancing home each evening, imitating a whole city going to bed. And Felix knew she liked that picture, but he wasn’t mean enough to say it aloud and force her to deny it. He kept it a secret and it made her feel precious and respected. Cassie wished she could visit him.

Instead she was waiting in line without him to get her final certificate.

"Congratulations, Cassandra.", Professor Barnabas whispered as he handed her the certificate. For a second she was sure he would say something else. Something that wasn’t the headmaster, but Felix’ dad.

"Thank you, Sir." Maybe she should have said something instead. But should she make him feel better or just tell him what she thought or was it the wrong moment for any of that? Without having anything to say, she got back in line. What the heck did she think? What could she even had said about him?

She could see her mom’s stiff pine within the audience on the tribunes without even looking. If they had stayed in Alberta, her dad would probably have made one of his embarrassing signs that had her name on it and cheered and make her blush and hate him for it, like he used to do at her football games. But if they had stayed in Alberta, they would have drowned eight years ago and their bodies would now get eaten by the frogfish that lighted up Atlantis Stadium. Cassie looked up to them and wondered if they were watching them.

_They think it’s a dance and they wonder who choreographed it and then, when we’re all asleep, they go home and try do dance it themselves._

Maybe what Felix had seen was still somehow true. In a weird, tangled way that only existed inside his mind and that he decided to share with her.

~ ~ ~

The UnderGround was full of celebrating students, some going to after-parties in the Fifth, some excitedly talking to their families or impatiently messaging their peers where the heck they were. Cassie sat silent next to her parents. Her dad had leant his head against the window and closed his eyes, while Cassie’s mom stared straight ahead.

When they had moved to Atlantis, her dad had pointed to the glassy ceiling of their tunnel and told his daughter, "Look at all the water. It’s going to be be like diving through the ocean, whenever you go to school."

But Cassie had never really liked diving. Or water. It was boring and it made her feel cramped. Not as much as it would make her father though, she had learned only a few months later. There was no university in Atlantis yet, so he had been transferred to a pediatrist office, which was the closest thing to a professorship of neuroscience the town could offer. It wasn’t very close.

"Aren’t you going to any party?", her mom asked, not even adjusting her gaze.

"No, mom. I don’t have any friends."

"I thought you found someone new. It’s already some time since Felix left."

Cassie only stared at her. "You know, everybody agrees with you. Everybody thinks I’m a weirdo and that I hate people."

"Don’t you?", she finally turned around to look at her.

"Whatever." Cassie mumbled and faced the window again. She wished she could talk to her dad instead. At least he congratulated her, even though he was tired as fuck and even though she barely got through the exams. It’s strange, Cassie thought, that he has a professorship and he’s the one who doesn’t care about my grades.

The UnderGround stopped.

"Professor Barnabas should have said something about him.", her mom continued staring straight ahead. She only tried to be nice. Cassie repeated that in her head. She only tries to be nice and she thinks it makes me happy. "Felix was his son. He should say something, just as a parent he …"

"Shut up, mom. Just shut up. Don’t act like you understand any of that bullshit." Cassie got up, ignoring that her dad had woken up and was watching them. "I’m walking." And without a good-bye she left the UnderGround.

~ ~ ~

Instead of heading home, Cassie turned eastwards. Her mom could celebrate all by herself that she had raised such a dumbass.

She walked over an hour through the tunnels, while the frogfish slowly left their feeding stations and the fairy lights were turned on. Slowly, even the last pedestrians disappeared into the UnderGround and the tunnels cleaned up. There was nothing to see but the wide, dark water. Close to her, she could see an orange and pink coral reef, completely covering a five floor building on the outside. Behind that there were other streets beneath glassy, round ceilings, other fairy lighted domes and very far out you could see other water turbines and the never ending importing towers reaching as high as the sea itself. But behind all of that, there was more water and there would always be more water. You could never escape it, just like the mountains back in West Alberta - only high pressured and ready to kill you at any instance.

Cassie leaned against the tunnel. She was constantly wishing to escape them. To just break the damn glass and float the damn city and swim upwards towards some goddamn fresh air that hadn’t been filtered a hundred times and pumped two miles down to some freaking artificial city consisting of glass and tunnels and that was supposed to be the eights world wonder, but ended up being a depressing refugee camp for everyone who held a degree.

She crossed the coral bridges that lead to the Eastern districts. Two boys were kneeling on the floor, their noses pressed against the walkway to watch the clown fish swimming through yellow-pink sea anemones, lighted up by the fairy lights that were installed in the bottom of the bridge. "Get up, pigs", Cassie mumbled as she crossed them, but the boys got too excited about the little rainbow that formed in the balustrade to even notice her.

There was nearly no one at the Eastern Ring, everybody had streamed towards the centre, to the party places and the restaurants that were working the whole night through. In the office, everybody would be up late, blogging and preparing articles for the Morning Tabloid about yet another generation of dumbasses partying their way out of school. But since Cassie was one of them, she had her night off. She remembered the magazine that her dad had once shown of his graduation, a thick brooklet printed with ink and featuring colourful selfies instead of perfect gifs. He even had most of the photos signed by his classmates, in blue and black and red pens and at the backside his teacher had written a congratulations letter in her own handwriting. Cassie had been so excited to hold her edition when she graduated. But now paper was as rare as leaves or sunlight and by the morning everybody would like and share and comment the next posts und within a few weeks their graduation articles would have drowned in all the other selfies, just like the rest of the world had drowned in melted ice.

Cassie stopped at the edge of the dome, where doors lead to apartments built on the outside. The houses all looked very similar, doors of metal or glass leading to apartments, hidden beneath colourful, artificial reefs. There wasn’t anything special about number 7-71, but Cassie couldn’t stop looking at it. This was were she should be. She imagined Felix and herself, covered in blankets and holding her favourite stuffed animals, a sloth called Salamander. They would be drinking coffee without milk and eating his dad’s sea-salted crisps, while making fun of yet another movie. Maybe they would have headed somewhere in the city to make fun of drunken students instead, while drinking coffee without milk and eating burritos.

The speaking system of 7-71 clicked and Cassie could hear Professor Barnabas voice. "Cassandra? Do you want to come upstairs?"

She hesitated, but she couldn’t just stand here and keep watching her headmasters flat like a creepy-ass stalker, could she? "Thank you, Sir."

The door opened and she made her way upstairs until she reached the highest floor. Outside of the windows, some leftover frogfish swam against the gentle stream, but they weren’t enough to light up the dark floor. Professor Barnabas was awaiting her at the door. He was wearing the usual dark green turtleneck that he always wore when Cassie had visited Felix. She could see a half-emptied bottle of red wine standing on the kitchen counter.

"Do you want some? To, you know. Celebrate?", Professor Barnabas offered.

"No, thanks."

An awkward silence fell over the room. "Well …", the professor started again. "You must be hungry. Do you want some … some crisps?"

"No … yes. Please." It seemed impolite to refuse again. He put a bag of sea-salted crisps in a wooden bowl. "You must … I don’t know. Do you just want to stay here?"

"Professor Barnabas?"

"Yes, Cassandra?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

He hesitated, because he knew what she was about to ask. "Of course.", he then said.

"What exactly happened?" She looked him straight in the eye, knowing that refusing the crisps would have been less brazen.

Professor Barnabas kept silent and so did Cassie.

"I am not sure …", he finally started, but stopped himself immediately. "Do you want to take a seat?"

She didn’t. "Yes, thank you." He sat down in the opposite armchair. It had the same dark green as his turtleneck. He waited if Cassie would say anything.

"I suppose your question is understandable", he finally started, avoiding to meet her eyes. "When we moved here, Felix’ mother didn’t deal very well with the change. Like many others, she got more and more depressed. I think you know what that means." She knew bloody fucking well, thank you very much. "She wanted to go back and didn’t stop talking about how we could live in the woods and everything would be better than here." He finally looked at her. "I’m sure you know that that’s not true." Cassie didn’t respond.

"You know what happened. The floats destroyed the world’s cities, but after we left - those of us who were lucky enough to get a place - after that, there were thunderstorms and tornados destroying nearly all nuclear power stations. Everyone who was still out there, got killed by catastrophe after catastrophe. Atlantis is the only safe place left that we know. I told Vineeta that again and again. It was very hard to get accepted for Atlantis. We were very lucky, because Vineeta was a famous nuclear physicist and I … well, I was a good teacher. But she didn’t listen to me, but kept talking about going back outside." He paused, until he added in a very low and sad voice, "She was very desperate."

Cassie thought of taking a crisp, just out of politeness, but the Professor had forgotten he put them on the table anyways, so she decided it wasn’t important anymore.

"A month ago, Vineeta and I had a big fight, because she kept talking to Felix about her ideas. It were dangerous thoughts." He looked at Cassie again. "I hope you understand that, Cassandra, it’s really important. No-one can live outside of Atlantis except for a few manufacturing robots. Vineeta was sick."

He waited for a long time. "I understand that.", Cassie ensured, so he would continue talking.

"However. After our fight she left the flat. She did that a lot when we were arguing. But this time …" He took a long pause and Cassie didn’t interrupt him. "She left Atlantis.", he then said.

"Where’d she go?" Only when she had already pronounced the words, Cassie realised that they might be inappropriate.

He hesitated for a long time. "Outside.", was all he answered.

"And Felix?"

Professor Barnabas wiped his face. "Like I said, Vineeta told him a lot about her fantasies. Felix always liked stories that sounded magical and as we all do, he missed his home. After his mother was gone, he said it was my fault, because I didn’t believe her and that we should go after her. That she was right." He paused once more and Cassie supposed there were a lot of emotions that she couldn’t read. "He believed every word she had spoken. So he went after her. At least, that’s what I believe.", he added with a bitter tone in his voice.

Cassie remembered that Felix had once asked her about the Outside. "What do you think it looks like now?", he had asked.

"I don’t care. We can’t go anyways.", was all she had answered. Maybe there had been more on his mind than she had figured out.

"I am very sorry, Cassandra. He was just as sick as Vineeta." His voice got up as he said the words he wanted to believe so desperately.

He wasn’t fucking sick, you asshole, she wanted to scream. He had dreams and hopes and he liked to go to school, he laughed about stupid stuff and let me bitch around and he drank coffee without milk and that’s none of the things my dad does. He wasn’t sick, you idiot.

Instead, she only said, "Can I go to his room?"

Professor Barnabas nodded. "Of course. Make yourself at home."

"Thanks."

She got up and left, before she remembered that she should probably have thanked him for telling everything.

~ ~ ~

Felix’ room looked mostly like she knew it. The bed was made and at the wall, there were digital photos of landscapes hanging around. She recognised the Scandinavian mountains, the polar lights, a lake in Patagonia and a bunch of frozen waterfalls from Iceland. As far as Cassie knew, his mother had taken those photos on holidays when Felix was a child. Vineeta Barnabas. There was only one picture that didn’t show a gorgeous landscape. Instead, it had captured a small dog that looked like peanut butter and chocolate sprinkles. His coat was so fluffy that he couldn’t be very old. Cassie’s mom had never allowed any pets, but with hindsight it might have been the best. They already had to leave enough behind.

The desk was perfectly tidy except for a few single Geography notes and one of the old-school Messengers that they had used to feel like home, because they reminded them both of the WalkieTalkies they had used as children. They had soon become unnecessary, considering how the whole world had gotten free wifi before it sunk on the ground.

Next to the bed, there lay the book he had been allowed to take with him. It was a collection of short stories and was probably the only thing in the room that Cassie had shown open interest about. Most of the stories she didn’t like, but there was one about a plane crash and a dead dog that she couldn’t read enough, even though she never understood what happened.

She took the book and lay down on the giant beanbag that she had slept on a few times. Even holding the paper calmed her down a little. She opened the pages to reread the plane story, when a single paper and a shopping card fell out of it. Without any thought, Cassie unfolded it.

_Dear Felix,_  
_I'm going to the Outside and prove that we are right. I’ll take one of the old Messengers with me and tell you when to come. I left you my old ID cards. Take one and go to the abandoned ImPipes in 8. Hope to see you soon._  
_Love, Maan._

She looked over to the Messengers on the desk. Was that the reason he followed her?

_Incoming message on all devices. Message cannot be loaded. Please try again._

The error stayed, no matter how often she refreshed. Was that Vineeta’s call from outside? Or was it just one the kids playing around with the channels?

Cassie held the Messenger tight. Whatever this message was, wherever it came from. Felix must have believed it was his mom’s. Maybe he had been able to receive it on another device and then deleted it. And even if not … would it be enough proof for Felix to take the risk and follow his mother? Felix, who told stories about dancing fish and the happiness of corals and asked her if she believed in the Outside? She did not, but did she trust her crazy best friend and his depressed mother?

Cassie took the letter and put up the shopping card that had been in the book. It was a security ID. _Dr. Vineeta Barnabas. Scientific Consultant, ImAge Engine Corporate. Maintenance of ImPipes._

She took the ID and the Messenger and left without even thinking about Professor Barnabas.

~ ~ ~

The neon lights of the day were already turned off and in Eight there wasn't any place to party. Even though the abandoned importing towers might have been a great location, Cassie thought. She put Vineeta’s ID through the controller.

_Dr. Vineeta Barnabas, maintenance. Access granted._

One beep and the heavy door opened. The building lay in complete silence. Only Cassie’s steps echoed from the thick walls of metal. She wondered if they were covered by corals as well. The muffled sound of water lapping against the hollow steel walls indicated otherwise. With each step she made it seemed to get louder and louder.

_They are singing a song of loneliness_ , she could nearly hear Felix explain it in her mind. _They sing it for you, because you came to visit them in their exile._

Great. A song of loneliness just for me, she thought. Thanks, buddy.

Vineeta’s ID granted Cassie access to the pipes like she had only opened an apartment door. It was so easy. Was that what Felix and his mother had also done? Had they been here and climbed all those rungs? And what had waited for them on the Outside?

She wanted to know. She wanted to go outside and breath some real air again and she wanted to see her friend. She gripped the first rung. The latter was definitely not made for climbing. If at all, it was made for building those damn things in the first place. After two-hundred metres she made the first stop. There was no end in sight. Was this really a good idea? She looked back. Her mom would freak out if she new what Cassie was doing. If that wasn’t some motivation.

She reached the five-hundred metre mark. Seven-hundred. One kilometre. Something around half a mile, she reminded herself. Slowly, she continued to climb up.

It must had been two hours until she had reached the top marker. 3.3 km. How many miles that was, she didn’t remember. Two maybe? Scant of breath she sat on the upper rungs for a few minutes. What time was it? She didn’t even know when she had left Professor Barnabas apartment.

Cautiously she opened the hatch for only the fraction of an inch. The metal was thick and heavy and for a second Cassie feared she would loose her balance and fall to death. There was no water dropping in in from outside the hatch. No thunderstorms rolling over her head or bestial creatures attacking her on first sight. Instead, fresh, cold air blew in her face as she fully opened the hatch. A small platform of iron surrounded it, which she climbed upon. There was nothing to hear except for the wind and the soft ripples of water against her fingers. This was something entirely different from the tons of water pressing against Atlantis. This ocean was just as giant and deadly, but it couldn’t stop her from breathing. Or leaving. And with a smile she stood up and figured out, that now it was also out of Atlantis’ reach to stop her either. She closed the hatch.

She slipped on the wet grid and cut open her left palm. "Damn it.", she muttered, carefully standing up again. She could barely see her own feet, which - now that she thought about it - wasn’t too fortunate considering that she didn’t even know where the heck she was. Maybe she should have stolen Felix’ Geography notes from the desk. Or just a fucking torch.

Her steps ruptured the silence as she slowly walked down the grid bridge. There was nothing to see of Atlantis beneath the black ocean anymore and while it was scary being all on her own, it made her feel powerful and free. The only problem was the cold. In Atlantis she had never needed a jacket or sweater, so the only clothes she could wrap around her shoulders was the oversized, beige cardigan she always wore. At some point the bridge changed to wood. Wet, rotten wood, overgrown by slippery algae. She tried not to think about what would happen if the planks broke and instead tied her cardigan tighter around her shoulders. Vineeta und Felix also walked here and so far the bridge had survived that.

In the distance a tiny light was flickering. A lamp, she thought hopefully, but about twenty yards later the light was gone again. Irritated by the sudden disappearance Cassie stopped and looked around for a second. All around her was the quiet, dark water, swapping against the wood and from time to time also splashing her feed. Above the ocean, there hung the completely dark night sky and only a fraction of the moonlight got through the ever existing clouds of dust. But right in front at the end of the path there seemed to be a shadow of an island. Cassie started walking again, as fast as she possibly could on the algae tainted planks. The wound in her hand was burning in the cold.

The light flickered up once more before she finally reached the beach. It was quite small and moving hectically. As she came closer, Cassie recognised them as two birds.

"What the -"

The birds circled each other, but she was right. They were also glowing in the dark. As far as she could tell, it were only their feathers that left yellow and orange streaks wherever they flew by. _They were stars that fell in love, but they couldn’t be together_ , she heart Felix creating his absurd stories again. _So they wished to be reincarnated as birds, but when the night comes out, their extrastellar souls shine the way for strangers._

"Bullshit", she said out loud. That’s two fucking radioactive birds. In the most literal fucking sense. But she still wished Felix was here to tell his corny fairytales.

"Felix?", she whispered, but only the birds chirped as an answer, higher and softer than she was used to. Water swashed over her feet. "Damn it." She stepped away from the shallow flood, course sand sticking to her wet soles. "Damn it.", she repeated once more and looked around. Felix must have been here. If anything, this place had his name written all over it. Where would he have gone? Looking for his mom? But she had probably waited here for him. Cassie held her left hand and wrapped it inside her cardigan, hoping it wasn’t bleeding.

Now that she thought about it, Cassie doubted if she even was welcome here. Vineeta had given her son instructions on how to find her, but Felix hadn’t told Cassie about it. She had cheekily went inside his room and searched his stuff. And when she had found something, she had just come upstairs without any thought if she was even welcome. She could be so stupid. Angry about herself, she trudged towards the forest. The trees were higher than any building she had ever seen in Atlantis, white and thin as human arms. In the dark she wasn’t sure which color the leaves had, but what did she care anyways? The frozen leaves beneath her feet crackled with every step and with every step the cold creeped deeper into her skin. This was a fucking bad idea. She should just turn around and go home … And explain to her mom where she’d been all night. No, thank you. But it was so damn cold.

After what probably was fifteen minutes, but seemed like ages, Cassie decided that it wasn’t worth freezing to death and that she was better off being yelled at. Or just staying in Felix’ room. How much cold could a human stand anyways? Probably not very much when said human was only wearing a cardigan. From time to time, other birds crossed her way, most of them being everything between yellow and orange - _like flying sunsets_ , Felix would say - but a few times she realised turquoise and blue creatures shining through the pale leaves. _Fucking birds_ , was all she thought. At least she couldn’t feel the pain in her hand anymore, thanks to the cold. After another hour, Cassie decided that plan B didn’t work either and that she had been lost. 

At some point, she found old railway tracks, overgrown with thick layers grass and moss. Cassie didn’t dare to trip on the rotten planks, scared that they would break and let her fall half a metre in the whole of some radioactive murder rabbit. Instead, she decided it was safer to walk on the rails. When she couldn’t feel her fingertips anymore, she had reached an old highway, whose cement had burst from giant trees sticking their long roots through it like pale fingers in a horror movie. She decided to follow the road, hoping to find _something_ to stay at. Possibly with a heating system, but she didn’t have high hopes.

As she walked the uneven ground, the darkness slowly began to crawl back into its caves. _That’s were the darkness lives, afraid someone might find out and burn her with a torch._ "Shut up. You’re not even here." The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the sky turned into a brighter version of greyish blue. The dust clouds stayed where they were, but instead of keeping the cold out, they only stopped the warmth from making its way inside.

When her legs refused to walk any longer, Cassie decided to give up, to just crawl up in the forest and wait for some warmth or fucking death. There was a pretty big copse just another few metres in front of her. But as she wanted to cleave through the underwood, she realised that there actually was a car buried within the scrub. And not only a car, but a whole bus. Where the tendrils hadn’t claimed the vehicle for themselves, the dirty yellow of an old school bus was still visible. She was too tired to even wonder about it, and instead just climbed inside through a broken window and crawled up on one of the tattered banks. She only hoped there were no poisonous spiders attacking her in the sleep. And if, that she at least wouldn’t wake up from it.

~ ~ ~

"Wake up! Do you hear me, Cassie? Hey, please wake up!"

"What the hell?", she murmured and tried to sit up. Her back was screaming at her to stop it, to hopefully just stop existing for a day and she wouldn’t have had any objections. But apparently there was someone else in the bus and that someone was talking to her in a soothing voice. "Hey, slowly. Just wake up. Are you okay? Are you cold?"

It took a second until she realised where she was. The sun was shining through the tendrils that held the bus and even though it wasn’t very bright in the bus, it was actual sunlight. Sunlight that her eyes hadn’t seen in over eight years.

"Hey, are you okay?", the soothing voice repeated and as Cassie turned around, she stared straight into Felix’ face. He had a few scratches on his cheeks and his hair was just a little longer than it used to be.

"Are you okay, Cassie?"

The weird thing was that he had gotten beard stubbles. But apart from that he definitely was her Felix. The light brown skin, the black curls, the worried look.

"Cassie? Are you okay?"

"I … don’t know." She could only stare at him. At the abandoned driver’s cab behind him. She sat up and a blanket fell off her lap. "What …"

"It’s okay." Felix got the blanket and put it around her shoulders. Cassie wondered if now that the sun was shining, if the air outside the copse would also warm up. "But … could I ask how you got here?"

She looked at him again and finally, all her emotions that she had been carrying around for the last month flooded back like the ocean over Alberta. "What the actual fuck, Felix?!", she yelled and his expression froze. "You just left? You just fucking left and didn’t even _think_ of telling me anything? You think you can just go and leave me behind and just … the fuck?!"

Guilt had found its way onto his face. "I am sorry I didn’t tell you anything. You didn’t … you were never interested in the outside."

"I fucking _hate_ Atlantis."

"I know …" He looked up. "But you didn’t believe in the option. I wanted to call you, when I found out if it was true, I wanted to send you a text or get back and … tell everyone."

"And why didn’t you?", Cassie asked as he didn’t continue to speak.

Felix took a look over his shoulder. "Before my mom went upstairs she had left me a note to wait for a message."

"I know."

"You … oh. Okay. So … when I got her text, it didn’t get through, but I was sure she was calling me. I … I just wanted to go outside.", he added in a low voice. "I wanted to look for her and then come back and tell you …"

"You already said that. So why didn’t you come back then, coward?"

"You can’t." He looked her straight in the eye. "The hatch is locked from outside. We cannot open it. Messages are obviously not getting through, so we didn’t send any, in case … in case someone was as stupid as me. But … how did you come here? Or, why?"

"I found your mom’s letter." Cassie wanted to lock herself in her room, crawl under a thousand covers and hold Salamander. She pulled the thin blanket tighter around her shoulders. "But isn’t there another entrance? The other import pipes, they have to have ladders too … and the official entrance … we could knock there … they know that we belong to Atlantis. Also … why do we have to leave anyways? There’s no problem up here, we could tell our parents and get everyone out and …"

Felix shook his head. "We’ve been walking around here for some time. It’s an island and the bridge to the land was flooded. It’s a road leaving the island, we can’t see anymore, where it was supposed to end, but it’s snapped off like a paper plane, a few metres after the beginning. It’s just a dead end leading down some cliffs like it’s given up on the rest of the world. As if it knew there was nobody who needed it anymore."

"It’s just a bridge.", Cassie replied. "Don’t feel to sad for the damn thing."

"Yeah. Probably." A crooked smile made its way onto his lips.

"Okay, so … we're here. We can't leave and we can't go back. But why can’t we sent enough messages downwards and tell them that it’s safe again? Someone will understand and they will send a searching troop and we can make a sign at the hatcher to …"

"Cassie." Felix looked at her very serious. "We cannot do that."

"Why’s that?"

"Because we don’t know for sure what’s out here. We don’t know if it’s safe. We don't know how much radiation’s left or how much even reached this land spot in the first place. My mom is working on analysing the trees, but she’s not an expert on biology and there’s no equipment." He took her hands and suddenly seemed very sad. "You shouldn’t have come here, Cassie."

For a long moment they both rested in silence.

"There’s no way back? No way off this island? And a chance that we might all die a very painful death up here?", she finally concluded what she had learned within the last minutes.

Felix nodded.

"And there’s nothing we can do about any of it?"

He shook his head. "Not more than my mom is already trying."

She wanted to crawl in her bed. She really just wanted to crawl in the blankets and cry in her pillows and even hug her mom. She would never see her mom again. Neither her mom, nor her dad, nor Professor Barnabas or the girls from the Tabloid. Not even the English teacher who had called her vocabulary creative, which was just a nice version of "swears a fucking lot". What the hell had she done?

Cassie took a deep breath. "Okay."

Felix raised an eyebrow. "What, okay?"

"Okay like all of this sucks and I hate my life, but I’m still cold and I suppose you have some place where it's warmer because you’re not a fucking ice king yet. So, I would really like to go there and … and drink some water." She tried to breath calmly as Felix put his hands on her shoulders.

"Don’t panic, stupid."

"Don’t … don’t call me stupid."

He smiled and took her hand. "Come on, I’ll show you something."

When they left the bus, the sunlight was overwhelming Cassie’s eyes. She blinked a few times, but the white and grey marbled bark of the trees on the opposite side of the road didn’t help. Most of their pale leaves were lying on the floor, but some light red ones were still hanging more than ten metres over their heads. Between the branches, Cassie could see yellow and orange and blue birds hopping around.

Felix pointed at the annoyingly twitching creatures. "At night their plumage lights up in the most beautiful colours. It looks like they are fallen stars, reincarnated as birds, so that they could fly wherever they want to."

She smiled a little. "They’re only fucking birds."

"And see, the crooked road? That’s the forest trying to breaking free and see the sunlight, just as we did."

"You’re so stupid."

"I know.", he gave her a long and warm hug. "But somehow I have to offer resistance to your _genius_."

"Haha."

She was too tired to fire back and just leaned against her friend’s chest. She really hoped they wouldn't die too soon.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments and kudos will be highly appreciated and (in case of comments) answered.


End file.
